Chapter Text
She twists the key in the lock, hearing the bolt as the door opens. It sticks on the way out, the way it always does, so Karen jiggles it a little to the left. She has perfected this over the past three months to get it free with minimal effort.
More post greets her from the floor of Matt’s apartment, a mess of letters she gathers up before shutting the door. She wonders how many are from his landlord, the guy sneering at her as she came up the stairs to remind her rent was due this Friday otherwise she needs to pack up his shit. Paying two rents in Hell’s Kitchen is crippling her but Karen knows she couldn’t give this place up. His place. Her last thread to Matt.
She’d find the money, she always does.
Maybe she could sell her car? It’s not like she uses it much since coming to Hell’s Kitchen anyway.
The silence greets her, cold and isolating as Karen makes her way into his apartment. She adds the letters to the stacks on the coffee table before taking off her black winter coat, throwing it over the back of the couch along with her bag.
A thin sheen of dust coats everything now, too much undisturbed for too long. Matt would have hated that. She wonders if that’s why he kept the apartment so clean and minimalistic, because with his senses the dust that clings to everything must have been a nightmare.
She should clean it. He’d want it to be-
Karen stops herself, changes course like she has been struck. She heads to his kitchen, fills a glass with water from the sink and takes a sip that tastes like ash in her mouth to steady herself.
Easy, Karen.
The walls of her sanity have been reinforced with avoidance. She measures each thought as it comes and files it, diverts the ones she doesn’t want to think about and replays the ones she can stand. It’s effective. Most days. On the days she has to convince Foggy she is fine.
Here, in his apartment, in the silence, it’s harder.
They haven’t found a body. Karen clings to that fact like a life raft. No body, no proof. Matt is Daredevil for fucks sake, she has to believe that gives him some kind of nine lives bullshit escape clause.
But if he is alive, he hasn’t come back and Matt would. She has to believe he would find a way.
She pours the rest of the water down the sink and cleans the glass before putting it back on the draining board because he would hate her leaving it in the sink.
The place swells around her, endless and lonely. There is a blanket on the back of the couch, his clothes are hanging up in the wardrobe. His laptop sits on the table just waiting for him.
She doesn’t tell Foggy how often she comes here. Doesn’t tell him some nights when she can’t sleep in her bed, she lays down on Matt’s instead. Karen knows it isn’t healthy but she is done painting her grief into pretty pictures for a hero’s death.
Matt was messy. They were messy and Karen’s grief is messier because of it.
Foggy doesn’t understand. His grief for Matt is bold and beautiful. Karen has seen his tears, listened to his stories and held his hand when it sneaks up on him in the middle of the day because something is scribbled in Matt’s handwriting or braille documents have arrived at the office. But Foggy goes home to Marci, he shares his grief with her in a way he can’t with Karen. Foggy pushes forward with his life because he knows that is what Matt would have wanted.
Karen doesn’t owe Matt that. She doesn’t owe him a damn thing.
He left-
He fucking-
Grief invades her bones like an army marching to war. It burrows like a cancer under her skin. It leaves her raw and bloody and searching for meaning she doesn’t think she will ever find. Her grief is feral, sharp teeth and claws unlike Foggy’s neat edges and tearful memories.
If Matt is offended by her grief then he shouldn’t have fucking died.
He shouldn’t have kissed her and then screwed it all up. He shouldn’t have told her about Daredevil like he hoped for something more. Like a surrender of the last barrier he held against her.
Some days Karen wants to punch Matt Murdock in the face.
Some days she wants to hold him and never let go.
Mostly, she wants to search through the rubble of Midland Circle with her bare hands until she finds something.
So, Karen doesn’t share her grief with anyone. She buries it. She sets it on fire. She houses it until her bones threaten to snap.
And she curses Matt for making her feel too much. Always too fucking much.
The world swirls around her in shades of grey, muted and dull and lifeless. Karen is sure his apartment is haunted some days, her hair standing on end at the back of her neck because everything feels the same and yet nothing does.
The fridge is empty now, no beer or oat milk or half-eaten salad wilting at the bottom. Karen had cleaned it all out weeks ago, scrubbing until her arms ached and her nails turned brittle from the force. She had told Foggy she would pack everything up, sort out what to keep or donate or throw away. She hasn’t done any of it, clinging to the ghost of him through sheer stubbornness and lies she sells to Foggy as her coping.
The mail is stacked up in neat little rows, junk and bills and miscellaneous stuff she can’t figure out without opening it and doesn’t want to open it because that will mean Matt isn’t coming back-
Matt isn’t coming back.
The thought chokes her, drowns her like a demon and engulfs her like a forest fire. Grief prickles along her skin like a hive of bugs, a thousand tiny needles that linger at the point of pain but don’t draw blood.
Karen hates the way grief feels on her skin. As a kid she spent hours showering until her skin was raw and pink just to get rid of the feeling. Her dad didn’t send her to a therapist although she probably needed one, he gave her more shifts in the diner instead and taught her to take care of the books.
Keep busy, Karen. That’s the key.
So Karen tries to outrun her grief like a thief outrunning the cops. She shoves it down into her chest until she feels full and sharp. The grief finds her anyway, as it always does, in the shape of Matt’s smile or the crinkles at his eyes when he laughed or the way he offered her the Daredevil helmet and promised he would stop.
The apartment isn’t haunted, she is.
Because every breath she draws feels like a stab to the chest and the exhale is his voice.
You deserve better, Karen.
Fuck you, Matt.
Her skin itches, burns, and Karen wants to claw down to the bone to stop it. To stop the memories. To stop the loss.
She wants to burn his apartment to the fucking ground just to feel something other than the empty black hole inside her.
Matt’s shower is big and clean and Karen strips off without thinking about it, leaving her clothes in a pool on the floor as steam rises from the stall when she turns the water as hot as it will go.
She is paying the bill, after all. She might as well use it.
The water scalds her skin but it turns the burn into a prickle again, the pain adjusting to her body so she can bear it. Out of the corner of her eye she catches sight of the half empty shower gel on the shelf, braille label over the lid so Matt knows which one it is. Next to it is his shampoo. Karen rubs her fingers over the bumps, imagines Matt’s fingers doing the same in the morning to make sure he used the right one.
Half empty, like he was coming back. Like he had just popped out for the day. His life was on hold and he was never coming back to it.
Karen doesn’t believe in God but she is starting to think he is a bit of a bastard.
God never deserved Matt Murdock.
Karen uses the body wash, the smell of Matt overwhelming as she scrubs her skin raw. She feels like she is trying to feed her grief, offering it something that smells like Matt to cling to in order to trick herself into thinking none of this is real.
He isn’t dead. He is gone, missing, waiting to be found.
In her head, Foggy is giving her that wounded dog look. The one that makes Karen want to cry because he looks like he has lost her along with Matt and she isn’t so sure he is wrong.
Her grief lingers in so many of her corners now. Takes over so much of her day.
It’s all she has left of him. Of course she holds onto it.
The water turns soapy as it lands at her feet and Karen tries to cling on to the essence of Matt around her. When the water runs clear again she sinks to sit at the bottom of the stall, knees to her chest. The water drowns out her sobs as it splashes down her back, plastering her hair to the side of her face as every last trace of Matt that was on her skin disappears down the drain and leaves her behind.
Just like he did.
It’s not the thought of Matt, but Fisk that gets her out of the shower. She turns off the hot water, that is more lukewarm now, and wraps herself in the fluffiest towel she has ever felt. Her edges feel like someone has set them alight but the grief is a hum rather than an itch now which means she needs to get to work.
She drips a trail of water from the bathroom to his bedroom, another thing Matt would hate and makes a mess of his drawers as she hunts for clean clothes that aren’t her own. Her fingers find a soft black t-shirt which she puts on, her skin still a little damp. On impulse she reaches for the grey hoodie on the back of the chair and puts that on as well. They smell minty and fresh, the familiar scent of his fabric conditioner enveloping her in pine. Matt’s socks are cotton, dozens of black pairs neatly stored so she steals the thickest pair she can find and rolls them up her legs.
Not quite a suit of armour but it will do.
Next she needs a drink. A large one because Karen doesn’t sleep without one these days and she is too wired to even think about trying.
He keeps the alcohol in the kitchen, no beer left but beer wouldn’t be strong enough anyway. Foggy had mentioned sleeping pills, she knows he takes them for his nightmares but Karen can’t even think about it. She hasn’t taken so much as had an aspirin since she left Fagan Corners with the promise to get clean and even her grief for Matt won’t drive her there.
The whiskey burns her throat, makes her wince as it settles in her empty stomach. When was the last time she ate? She’s been carrying a granola around in her bag since yesterday morning because she thought she might get hungry but it’s still there, sealed in the wrapper and a little crushed from the weight of her laptop.
Karen doesn’t get hungry anymore.
Another thing Foggy worries about.
She should keep a list. Foggy has gone from worrying about Matt to worrying about her and it’s getting harder to keep track of all the lies she tells him, all the ways she pretends to be fine.
I ate this morning, Foggy.
I’m sleeping. I tried that herbal tea Marci recommended and she was right.
The apartment is taking a little longer to pack up, who knew Matt had so much stuff.
She forgoes a glass and carries the whole bottle back with her, stopping to collect her laptop from her bag on the couch and taking both back to the bedroom. Crawling into Matt’s bed feels like coming home and she raises the bottle in a toast to the apartment before she takes a swig.
“Thanks for buying the good alcohol, Matt.”
The liquid chases the words down her throat and Karen takes another swig just to be sure they don’t come back up.
Her eyes catch the bedside table as she tucks the bottle between the pillows so it doesn’t fall. The same as always. His alarm clock, a few books in braille and on top of them, the thing that makes Karen’s chest cave in.
A menu from their restaurant.
Their date spot. The spot Matt wouldn’t even know existed if she hadn't taken him.
The memento mocks her, as it always does, because he kept it despite the fact he couldn’t read it. He placed it on his bedside table like he was trying to hold onto that one perfect night.
Karen wants to rip it to shreds with her fingers but she can’t even bring herself to touch it.
It’s a menu. It doesn’t mean anything. He was probably just using it as a bookmark. But she remembers the conversation they had when he told her about Daredevil in this very apartment, remembers the way he had called it their favourite restaurant.
I know you stopped at our favourite Indian place on the way over here.
Must have been a walk down memory lane because you didn’t order anything.
I can taste the Jameson’s off your lips.
Karen isn’t drunk enough for this.
She doesn’t think there is enough alcohol in the world for this.
Shoving the laptop open, she buries those memories down as far as she can. She drowns them with whiskey and absolutely refuses to look back at the bedside table again.
Then she gets to work.
Because Fisk has managed to get himself a deal with the FBI and a lavish penthouse hotel suite and Karen needs to find out why. Because Daredevil isn’t around to stop him now and neither is Matt Murdock but she is, she has to, because that’s what Matt would do.
And all she has left is what she thinks Matt would do.
Which is fucking pathetic but focusing on Fisk is easier than focusing on all the things she has lost. Karen is a reporter, this is her whole damn job.
This is one of the few things she has left that hasn’t left her.
When her laptop eventually dies, she has a few solid leads to chase down and most of the whiskey is gone. The first signs of daylight are burning orange in the sky outside Matt’s window and Karen’s limbs are heavy. The laptop slips from her lap, crashing to the floor as her head finally droops towards the pillow.
It doesn’t work the same at her place.
Something about Matt’s apartment, Matt’s bed that makes her finally shut down. Another thing Karen wants to hate him for because the last time she was here, she was telling him Daredevil wasn’t the problem and he had her hand over his heart like she had a right to it.
Yet, she can’t leave it.
Because that feels too much like leaving him.
This isn’t grief, she tells herself. This is goodbye.
One more night and then she will let him go. She won’t come back. She won’t do this.
One more night.
It’s been one more night for the past two months but Karen doesn’t like to think about that because the pillow still smells like Matt and if she closes her eyes hard enough, she thinks she can make out the indent in the mattress on his preferred side of the bed.
She passes out with her hand gripping the edge of his pillow like an anchor, her lungs burning like she is trapped under the rubble of Midland Circle with him.
/
Matt shouldn’t be here.
He doesn’t know why he came.
He left Matt Murdock to die in the collapse, the rest of his life collapsing before he even stepped foot into Midland Circle. He is the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen now. That’s it. His blood is his own to spill.
No care, all responsibility.
Maybe it was muscle memory that led him across the rooftops, bleeding and shaky, to his old apartment.
Maybe God is trying to tempt him.
The gravel crunches under his boots when he lands on the rooftop, one hand trying to cushion his fall because his body aches and Matt is pushing it too hard.
He freezes when he realises where he is. Trying to figure out how he got here.
The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen doesn’t have a home. He doesn’t belong here, in the life Matt abandoned before he could lose Foggy and Karen permanently.
Because that’s what Matt does. He sets fire to his own house before someone else can burn it down.
The church is several blocks away and honestly, Matt isn’t sure he is going to make it. His hearing is back but his balance is still shaky and the blood oozing from the cuts on his skin are definitely more serious than he first thought when he saved the man and his daughter.
Below, his old apartment beckons him in sounds of neon and a thousand memories.
From where he is, he knows the exact spot to stand in that will let him stretch his senses towards Foggy, towards Karen.
No.
He gave them up. He made his choice.
But his heart beats wildly in his chest and Matt has to wonder if it is some cosmic joke that allows him to survive a building collapse but not the temptation of checking in on his family.
In the end, he chooses his apartment because that feels like less temptation. Less of a failure. He checks it's empty before slipping in through the door from the roof access. Maybe it will help, being in an apartment that used to be his but is now empty. Maybe it will finally hit home that Matt Murdock is dead just like he wanted.
Only it’s not empty.
Matt takes the stairs slowly, tilting his head this way and that as he takes in the familiar smell of his place. Pine and the coffee from the place on the corner that always burns the beans. He reaches out blindly, knows what he will find before he finds it. The couch, cold leather and a wool throw, meets his fingertips and Matt tears his hand away like it burns.
His stuff is still here. Three months on and Foggy hasn’t packed it up yet?
The fridge in the kitchen hums, a constant noise at the base of his skull and when Matt runs a hand over the wall by the stairs, he can feel the heat of the pipes through the brick. His electric and hot water hasn’t been shut off either.
This isn’t right.
He pays better attention now, one hand against his bruised ribs to steady himself as he focuses beyond the familiar. The dust in the air clings to his skin like a cobweb he wants to shake off. Neat piles on the coffee table that smell like the mail bag that hadn’t been washed in a year from his usual mailman.
There. So obvious he hadn’t wanted to understand it before. Vanilla. Karen. Her scent lingers in his space more than it ever did when he was there. It invades every pore that isn’t clogged with blood. Matt can practically see a trail of it in his mind, from the kitchen to the couch to the bedroom.
He stumbles backwards, shock and guilt surging through his battered chest.
Karen.
What?
Matt can’t make sense of it, isn’t sure how to put the pieces together. They think he is dead, he let them think that but Karen is still stopping by, someone is paying his bills.
God, is she still hoping he’s coming back?
As if sent by God (or the Devil) he hears heels in the hallway, the jangle of keys in his lock. Matt needs to leave. He never should have come back here.
Matt Murdock is dead.
He needs to stay that way.
He takes the stairs three at a time, clenching his teeth at the pull on his injuries as he rushes to close the roof door while Karen opens the front one.
The sound of her footsteps have him in a chokehold and Matt couldn’t move even if he tried as he listens to her walk through his apartment like she does it every day. Confident in a way he never remembers her being in his home.
He knew they would take it hard, and in truth Matt hadn’t planned it, but when he woke it had been weeks and the world had filled in the blanks of his life (his death). It had been easier, he thought, just as Stick had once warned him.
Cut them loose or get them killed.
No care, all responsibility.
Below, Karen makes her way to the kitchen, bottles clink together which make him think she is taking the alcohol. He listens to her unscrew the cap, the gulp of the liquid sliding down her throat at a speed that both impresses and worries him.
“Shit.”
Her voice feels like a caress to his ears, something he shouldn’t care about anymore.
She is scared.
The realisation hits him like Midland Circle.
Her blood is pumping too hard in her veins, the liquid in the bottle sloshing on her hands. Adrenaline courses through her body, acidic on his tongue.
What the fuck is going on?
Why is she scared? Is someone after her?
He reminds himself it’s none of his business, reminds himself the best thing he can do for Karen, for Foggy, is to disappear and stay gone.
Stop fucking up their lives.
Why is she fucking scared?
Then he hears glass shatter from below him and Karen’s half sob, half roar of anger. Liquid rolls down the wall where the bottle landed, was thrown, Matt can hear it slide down to the floor where it drips into a puddle.
The city fades from his ears. His own pain fades from his mind.
Karen doesn’t clean the glass from the floor, crunching it under her heels as she heads for his record player. He matches her step for step, the layout of his apartment so vivid in his mind that he knows she pauses at the stack of records he hadn’t put away yet rather than the ones next to it, already packed with braille labels.
The sound of his favourite record fills the apartment and his ears and Matt is struck by the sudden memories it throws him into that he feels his chest tighten.
I’m Daredevil.
I don’t think Daredevil is the problem.
The city needs me in that mask, Foggy.
Maybe it does but I don’t. I only ever needed my friend.
Matt lets out a sob he isn’t expecting, curling his hand into a fist to muffle the noise as Karen paces below him with the agitation of a desperate woman.
This is why he left, this is why he can’t come back.
Because he brings destruction to every inch of his life. He’ll do the same to them.
Because Karen and Foggy deserve so much better than him.
Because he is only back to kill Fisk and Matt doesn’t want to deal with their disappointment. He doesn’t want them to draw him back in with forgiveness and hope when he has made the dark his home.
Matt has forged himself in the dark, he has made his peace with the demons that whisper to him there.
Hell is the right place for him, this is what that looks like.
But Karen’s reaching for another bottle of alcohol like it will calm her down and she is standing in his apartment that still holds the ghost of his old life and Matt cannot take another fucking step away from her now he knows she is there.
He has always been too weak for that.
So, he bleeds into the gravel and listens to Karen pace for hours when she should be sleeping, listening to record after record like she is performing a seance in his name.
Matt lets the pain of it drown him, leak out of him like the blood he is losing and tells himself he deserves it.
Because he does.
And when Karen starts to cry, he doesn’t go to her because he deserves this too. Her pain. Her grief. Matt builds a home for it in his heart because this is his fucking fault and he isn’t going to try and make it better. This is for the best, one day Karen will understand that.
When he stops listening to her fall apart maybe Matt will understand it too.
/
He goes back even though he knows he shouldn’t. Told himself he wouldn’t. He makes a habit out of it, every night he leaves the church and ends up on the rooftop of his apartment building because he just can’t help himself.
She was scared.
Some nights Karen isn’t there and Matt hopes she is home, sleeping and safe and moving on. Other nights she is, the clack of her keyboard or the slosh of alcohol in the bottle become the sounds of his evening. Matt doesn’t leave until she is asleep, his sheets rustling around her as she breathes.
On the worst nights, Matt has to fight everything in him not to go to her.
The nights when Karen breaks, shatters, and all he can do is listen. Her sobs become as familiar as his own heartbeat. On those nights she curses his name, finding oblivion in the bottle she goes to bed with and is up a few hours later like it never happened.
The soundtrack of Karen Page’s grief breaks his heart.
The thought of not bearing witness to it damn near breaks his soul.
Matt promises himself he will stop. Promises the minute she leaves that so will he and he won’t come back.
But he is starting to think even now his heart beats for her and he is kidding himself into thinking he can walk away now he knows where to find her.
As long as he stays away. Keeps his distance. He allows himself half-measures and stolen nights. He allows himself the torture of listening to her lose him because he deserves it. But no more than that. He doesn’t risk going into the apartment, even when she isn’t there, so sure she will find out he has been back.
Matt loves her enough to spare her from that.
Matt loves her enough to let her go, even if he can’t do the same.
Because she’ll find nothing good with him. In the wreckage of his heart. In the fight carved into his skin.
He has to worry about Fisk. About ending this once and for all.
Yet, he comes back the night next and almost wishes he hadn’t.
Blood has a very distinct smell, copper and richness. Matt knows it well. Knows the feel of it between his fingers, the taste of it on his tongue so he knows the minute Karen Page walks into his apartment bleeding.
Every nerve in his body tenses, a spring coiled up as she stumbles against the wall, one hand slamming against it to steady her. Matt catalogues the pounding of her heart, the way her jaw clenches in pain, the staggering steps she takes as little drops of blood fall onto the hard floor like a trail of breadcrumbs.
She’s hurt.
The devil inside him roars, aligned with Matt on this one fundamental fact. Neither can stand the idea of Karen spilling blood.
Matt’s fingers are curled into fists, painful as bone presses against skin. It’s her side, he is sure, the flimsy t-shirt she is wearing stuck to her wound and pulling at it with every step she takes.
Bile rises in his throat, hot and acidic.
Someone hurt her.
Someone who will hurt a lot more when Matt finds them because he will.
It gets harder to remind himself that he shouldn’t be there. That he needs to stay hidden. Karen’s pain tastes like poison hitting his bloodstream and her blood drips like the tick of a clock.
“Come on Karen, call an ambulance. You need a hospital.” He says it aloud like she might be able to hear him, like he could influence her through sheer will alone.
She is rummaging through his kitchen cupboards and drawers, sending utensils and crockery crashing to the ground as she searches for something. A first aid kit, he thinks, but he keeps it in the closet with the trunk and she hasn’t looked there yet.
Fuck.
He can’t listen to this. He can’t stand there and do nothing while Karen Page bleeds.
You win, he thinks bitterly, not sure if he is speaking to God or the Devil.
Karen’s steps are halting now, the scent of blood stronger in the back of his throat. She is losing too much blood, probably doing more damage to herself in her frantic search.
Matt has a split second to remember he is meant to be dead, to remember he walked away to keep them safe.
Then he remembers that if Karen is bleeding she isn’t fucking safe.
The walls he built in a church basement crumble to dust. Weeks to build, seconds to destroy and Matt knows he was kidding himself. Knows he is far too selfish for Stick’s teachings.
Because his heart will always be with Karen, even if he knows it’s a mistake to drag her into his mess.
He is through the door in seconds, mask still covering his face. She falls the second he crosses the threshold, her legs giving out under her behind the couch. Matt hears her breath falter, the slickness of the blood on her hand hitting the floor, the sound of the fridge humming behind her and the tiny little gasp she makes when she sees a figure in a black mask on the stairs.
Then she passes out, her head hitting the floor and taking his heart along with it.
“Karen!”
/
The first time Karen surfaces through the haze of darkness, all she feels is pain. Endless and burning along her hip, her side, every nerve in her body.
She is screaming, too trapped to move when she knows she has to because she was being followed and the attack…
The knife.
Strong hands are running up her arms, her face, her hair. Not a threat, because the voice that accompanies them feels like a fever dream, a ghost she longs for.
“You’re okay, Karen. You’re safe. I’m here.”
The darkness pulls her back under before she can even open her eyes.
She wakes again to a dark room, fuzzy shapes dancing against her vision when she opens them. The pain is softer now, rounded edges she can’t quite pinpoint.
There are pins and needles along her arm, her hand encased in warm fingers. Karen makes out a blurry outline in the dark, stubble and soft lips pressing against the back of her hand as soft muttered words filter into her consciousness.
Not a prayer.
A plea?
“I need you to wake up, Karen.” Another press against the back of her hand before the voice grows louder, “I swear I won’t stop if she doesn’t. If you think I will have any faith left if she doesn’t, then you really don’t want to test me. You don’t want to see how much worse this gets without her.”
Darkness surges up again and claims her, pulling her back to the sweet oblivion where she doesn’t hear the voice of a dead man or the threats he is making to his God.
The third time Karen pulls herself from the darkness, the sun is up and orange burns across her eyelids. The curtains are open. She blinks, screwing her face up against the brightness. Then she remembers the pain. It’s back, focused on her side now and the kind of constant ebb that makes her want to vomit.
She’s in Matt’s bed although she doesn’t remember how she got there, the dark sheets around her smell like him. Her hand moves sluggishly, like the rest of her body hasn’t woken up yet but Karen manages to guide her fingers to the wound, covered now by a neat bandage that tickles her skin. One glance down tells her she is now in one of Matt’s shirts, a crisp blue one he normally saves for court, half buttoned. Her legs beneath the sheets are bare. Karen tries not to panic at that, shoving the sheets down so she can take a look at the damage the knife made of her.
“You’ve been asleep for sixteen hours.” The voice startles her, her eyes finding the figure in black she thought she imagined last night with his back to her, facing the window, “I wasn’t sure if you just needed the rest or if that knife did more damage than I could sense.”
He turns then, no mask this time, and Karen takes in Matt’s face with a wild heart and a sickening pool of something icy filling her stomach.
“Matt.”
The word slips out in pure shock as he cocks his head to the side, as if studying the reactions inside her body at the sight of him. Alive. Here.
Not dead.
Karen doesn’t know how to process that, skating from disbelief to anger to sadness to relief and back again in the span of a few heartbeats. Matt doesn’t move, which she is grateful for, but he is looking in her direction with those eyes that Karen can read everything in. The worry, the fear, the relief, and something bitter at the edges she doesn’t want to name.
“What do you remember?” He asks, that voice rich and low and so achingly familiar it makes her want to cry.
But Matt Murdock doesn’t deserve her tears right now and the pain in her side keeps her focused on other things.
Her first thought is that he is a hallucination. That she pushed way past her limit on alcohol last night and now she is conversing with a ghost. How much blood did she lose? That can make you hallucinate, right?
That has to be what’s happening.
Because Matt Murdock cannot be alive and standing there like her knight in fucking black spandex when she has mourned him for months.
Even he isn’t that much of an asshole.
“Karen?” The way he says her name isn’t helping, the hint of care he doesn’t bother to hide.
Dead. Dead. Dead.
Not dead.
She needs a drink.
“How…” Her throat feels swollen, unused.
“I’ll tell you but right now I need to know what happened? Who did this?” He asks, taking a small step closer that has Karen balling her hands into fists against the sheets, “I don’t think anyone followed you back here, I haven’t heard anyone since you came back.”
She feels like she’s in the twilight zone.
Maybe that’s it, maybe she’s dead and Matt’s dead and that’s what this is.
But the pain is too real to convince her of that and Karen doesn’t think the bruise on his jaw would still be there if he was dead.
Fuck.
She glances down at the shirt on her body again, “Did you put this on me?”
He lets out a quiet exhale, “I needed to give you stitches. Five of them. I don’t know if they will leave a scar, I’ll check them when they start healing. I think my hands were shaking a little too much to…”
“That doesn’t answer my question.” Clipped. Firm.
“You were covered in blood so yes, I patched you up and put you in that.”
Fucker.
Karen feels a surge of anger at the audacity of him. The fact he thought he was allowed to touch her, to change her, when he let her believe he was dead. He let Foggy believe it.
“So, not dead.” That comes out as an accusation.
Matt sighs and she can hear the pain in it, “Not dead.” He confirms.
She flinches like he just detonated a bomb between them.
She needs to get out of here. Needs to get away from him. She needs her life to make sense again, needs to find her coat and shit, what day is it? What time? She is meant to be having dinner with Foggy. She promised. And unlike Matt, she doesn’t break her promises.
Pain explodes from the wound just above her hip bone as her feet find the floor but Karen pushes against it. The nausea and the prickling burn that spreads from her side to her chest and the way the world spins as she manages to get herself up right.
Matt is there, surging forward to help her with battered hands and the smell of pine that makes her want to scream.
One of his hands brushes against her bare thigh and Karen recoils.
“Don’t.” She snarls, “Don’t touch me.”
She manages to get to her feet, Matt frozen but thankfully, wisely, doesn’t try to help again. A thin sheen of sweat covers her back beneath his shirt and the world sways. Karen has to dig her fingers against the bandage on her side just to get it to stop, padding her slow way out of the bedroom as she tries to keep her breathing shallow.
She won’t give Matt the satisfaction of letting him hear her groan.
He trails her though, keeps a respectful distance but follows like a shadow. Maybe he really is haunting her. Maybe if she walks out the door now, he’ll go with her. If she walks down to the docks and into the water, she wonders if he would follow there as well.
“Karen.” It’s pained this time, anguished.
“Tell me you lost your memory, Matt.” She whirls on him, the world prickling black at the edges, “Tell me you were too hurt to move until now. Tell me you hated the idea of me and Foggy thinking you were dead.” She spits the word at him, “Tell me something that will make me believe you.”
The look of utter devastation on Matt’s face is not something she has built a defense against so Karen moves further away from him, placing the couch between them like a physical barrier.
He looks more strung out than she has ever seen him, his face gaunt, his stubble a little longer than normal. He looks so impossibly tired and rumpled, hair in disarray rather than neatly combed.
“I…” He starts then stops, as if the words dissolve on his tongue, “I didn’t… It was for the best.”
She hates the way he hesitates, the way he pauses like he is trying to find a palatable way to give her the truth.
The pain in her side is nothing compared to the anger at the way Matt shifts on the spot, head tilted down like he doesn’t know what to say.
“Why did you come back?” She tries instead, letting anger bleed into every word in the hopes he will pick up on it, “If you were so convinced letting us believe you were dead was the best choice you had, why come back.”
Matt looks up sharply, voice lower when he answers, “For you. You were bleeding, Karen. You were hurt. I couldn’t let that happen.”
He is a series of juxtapositions, of contradictions. Karen tries to understand his logic, really she does, but how can she when he was fully prepared to let them think he was done until she came back bleeding.
It’s not noble, she thinks to herself, it’s just selfish.
Because Matt won’t cling onto them to save himself but he expects them to do the same without question.
Karen is so tired of that. The lies and the words and the defense.
She wants to strip him bare just so he has nothing to hide behind. Wants to demand answers like a prosecutor to a witness on the stand.
A shiver goes through her, she hadn’t realised how cold it was in the apartment in just his shirt, something she found comfort in a few days ago but now seems to mock her.
Her tears and her blood and his lies.
What a mess they make. A crime scene. Two hearts broken, four hands bloody.
And he is still hiding from her, whilst demanding everything she has.
She hates that the most.
“Jesus Matt, I have dated junkies who were more honest than you. Even Frank, who has killed more people than I’ve met, found a way to be honest with me.” She says it with venom, with fire and the precision of a marksman.
The words have the effect she knew they would. Matt flinches, the movement so sharp she can’t miss it, and Karen wonders if he would flinch the same way when he detects a punch coming his way or a bullet in his path.
He is hurt. Good. Maybe he’ll understand a little of what she has felt for months.
“Everything I kept from you was to protect you.” He replies, voice cracking with emotion as his chest heaves through the tight black spandex shirt.
There is a question on her tongue about that. Why he has gone back to the black rather than the Daredevil suit but that’s the reporter in her and it’s her anger that wins out.
“I don’t want you to protect me! I just want you to be honest with me. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” Her voice is louder now, “What do you see when you’re around me? Not visually, but on the inside.”
She knows he listens, that he is listening even now. Knows he is probably reading a hundred little cues she has no idea she is giving off.
The tilt of his head is a give away, that thoughtful, far away look that she has always found so endearing.
Now, she just finds it sad because it’s the only way he seems to be able to know where to tread in this conversation. With caution and by cheating.
“Goodness.” He replies, defeated in a way Karen hasn’t seen before,“I see your goodness. I see your heart and hear your laugh and I know I never want to stop listening to it. I want to be the reason for it.”
It’s her turn to recoil, her heart humming in panic because that was honest. More honest than she was prepared for. So close to something that would have her out the door in seconds because the way Matt is looking at her now isn’t hurt, it’s pleading.
“Because you don’t think you’re good?” She understands him enough to know that’s one of the threads that led him here, one of the reasons he never thought she could want him.
Matt surprises her again with another grain of truth. Not monumental. Not earth shattering. Not nearly enough. He offers it like a plucked flower when she wants the whole field.
“I don’t… I don’t know what I am anymore.”
“And if I told you I wasn’t good?”
Matt is taken back by that, “Karen. You are.”
“How do you know?” She questions because she has always wanted to know. He has always been so sure but Karen has blood on her hands, whatever misguided hope he has in her is another lie.
“Because you are the only person I ever wanted to get it right with.” The words slam into her, full throttle and with a ferocity that steals the air in her lungs.
Butterflies fill her stomach without her permission and Karen holds her breath to smother them before they can take hold.
“Funny how that turned out.” The barb is meant to wound, to draw metaphorical blood. Matt’s brows furrow and her breath comes easier. She doesn’t like hurting him. But it is easier when she doesn’t filter her hurt for him.
His face grows grim, one hand rubbing over his jaw, “I want you to hate me, Karen. I deserve that.”
She lets out a bitter laugh, “If you wanted me to hate you, you shouldn’t have saved my life.”
“God, how could I have done anything else?”
“The same way you do everything, Matt. You make a choice without thinking about me or Foggy and wait for it to blow up in your face.”
His jaw tenses, shoulders slumping like the truth drains him, “I need to check your stitches.”
“No.”
“Karen, the knife didn’t hit any internal organs but it was deep enough for you to lose a fair bit of blood. Without a hospital I couldn’t…”
“Just stop!” Her voice is high, hands shaking at her sides, “Just stop pretending to care.”
“How can I prove to you that I do care. That I did this to protect you because I care. I know I’ve messed up your life and Foggy’s life in a way I had no right to.” He is shouting as well now, not loudly but with an intensity that makes her heart pound.
His muscles are rigid lines beneath his tight shirt, his eyes hard as they stare at her chin and Karen thinks she sees him, this version of him he hid from her for so long.
“Be. Honest.” She punctuates each word firmly, giving him no room for miscommunication or deflection, “You want to check my stitches, that’s my price.”
“And will you be honest with me in return? Because that thing in your voice, the thing you aren’t telling me is still there. You want honesty, fine, but you have to give me that as well.”
Matt’s tone is firm, the one he saves for court and police officers who think they know better. He is bartering with her, because even his honesty comes with a deal.
Karen wants to tell him to shove it, wants to yell at him until the anger drains out of her like snow melting on the ground on a warm day.
A part of her wants to fight him, to hurl every insult she has stored up and every ounce of pain that clings to her bones. It would make her feel better but that feeling wouldn’t last and while she can’t forgive him for the mess he has made in the name of protection, she does want answers.
So, she crosses her arms over her chest, ignores the consciousness she feels standing in his shirt and offers him a thin token of honesty in a move she learnt from him.
A small piece, not the whole pie.
“The guy who grabbed me last night was an FBI agent, he was still in his jacket. I didn’t get a good look but I would put money on the fact he is on Fisk’s payroll.” She clears her throat, “I’ve been looking into how Fisk managed to score a lavish penthouse suite in one of the finest hotels in New York. I guess he doesn’t like that.”
“Jesus, Karen.” Matt utters, “Do you have a death wish?”
“You don’t get to ask me that.”
“Fisk is dangerous.”
“And you were gone. Daredevil was gone. If you believe for one second Fisk wasn’t going to keep tabs on me and Foggy after the firm put him away, that building must have done some serious brain damage.” She snaps, shifting when her position starts to put strain on her wound.
Matt clocks the move, “Can we sit down?”
She ignores him, “Tell me why you came back, because if you heard me bleeding last night then you were close by.”
The billboard outside his building changes colour, blue shifting to red and making Matt’s skin glow vibrantly. His bottom lip twitches, tongue sweeping across it as he swallows.
“I didn’t plan on it.” He admits, “I didn’t even realise I was heading back here until I was on the rooftop and then I heard you.”
“You heard me?”
“Here. Moving around, you were sad. You are scared. I knew I should have left but I couldn’t. I told myself I was just checking in, making sure you were okay. You weren’t sleeping. Then you came back and you were bleeding and I… I couldn’t ignore it, Karen. I never want to hear that again.”
He looks worried, afraid in a way that Karen thinks is honest because he isn’t shying away from her now. The red of the billboard paints a brilliant flush on his cheeks, eyes glassy like he is holding back tears.
“How I’m coping is none of your business.” She reminds him tersely, “That was your choice.”
“God, Karen. Can we…”
The look she gives him must translate through her body because it silences the question he was about to say, “Thank you for being honest.”
It’s a dismissal, cold and brutal, and Matt seems to understand it because he holds himself straighter. The light from the billboard changes to a brilliant blinding white that highlights every bruise and dark shadow on his skin.
“We had a deal.” He tells her and it makes her want to laugh because does he honestly think she owes him that?
“We used to have a lot of things.”
“Karen, please…”
“Did you even care? About what this would do to me, to Foggy? Did you stop and give us a second thought on the road to martyrdom?”
“Every second.”
She shakes her head to hide the shake in her hands and Matt seizes the moment to close the distance between them. He crosses the ocean between them that is only the length of the couch and Karen is too startled to back away.
Up close she can see the bruises clearly, blooming against his skin and his knuckles like a caress. She can see the dark shadows beneath his eyes, the exhaustion in the lines of his face.
He still smells the same. That’s the thought that almost destroys her. The smell of pine from the body wash she used to feel closer to him.
Her anger returns like a feral thing, snapping and snarling at the proximity of him. The man who once kissed her with such tenderness it made her lightheaded in the rain.
“Every second.” He repeats, softer and desperate, “I hate myself for it. I want you to hate me for it because that will make it easier. Because I can’t protect you from Fisk when I’m trying to be both Matt Murdock and Daredevil. When I’m pulled in so many different directions, one day I know something will slip and I’ll make a mistake and that mistake will cost you your life or Foggy his. I’m not being noble, Karen. I’m desperate. I’m hanging on by my fingertips and the only thing, the only thing, that makes my survival worth it is knowing that you and Foggy are safe from me, from my life, from this fight with Fisk.”
She is still shaking but not from the pain or the cold now. Matt looms in front of her like a ghost, a hallucination, and Karen wants to find a way to make him understand the hurt inside her that is ripping her apart like a hurricane. She wants to explain that his protection and her grief are tearing their fucking house down.
Maybe she should have bled out, maybe then he would realise how futile this all is.
Something dark coils in her chest, something that pricks at the pads of her fingers and the back of her neck.
She feels cornered, trapped in a way that she has never felt with Matt before. His honesty doesn’t soothe her anger, his presence doesn’t calm her rage. It makes it worse.
Because he could have avoided all of this if he was honest in the first place.
If he stopped pushing her. Stopped acting like her life mattered more than his. Stopped acting like he cared about her when he let her think he was fucking dead.
She doesn’t respond to him, she doesn’t know how without screaming.
Her nails dig into her palms, leaving half-moon indents in her skin.
The billboard changes again, soft pink lighting that is advertising some kind of perfume.
Matt takes a step closer, “Your turn, Karen. Give me something honest.”
It feels like a test, a challenge, fire on gasoline.
A part of her wants to offer up her bloody pain and her fear and shove it into his chest so he can feel it.
He is standing too close.
Karen shoves him without thinking, the move surprising them both.
And that feels honest.
Matt stumbles back half an inch, her hands firm against his chest. She feels a surge of power, a surge of anger. She does it again, harder this time. Her body is shaking and even though Matt could hold firm he doesn’t, lets her chase him away with the force of her tiny hands against his chest like he knows she needs it.
She hates him for that.
He doesn’t defend himself and the third shove is sloppy, something crawling up the back of her throat as a sob escapes her, half-strangled and without her permission.
Then she kisses him, launches into his space before she can draw a breath, her mouth on his with a hardness that makes her teeth ache.
Matt is frozen, arms wide like he isn’t sure whether to touch her or let her keep going. Like he isn’t sure what this is, what she is doing, why she is doing it.
Then he falters, she feels his body give and he is kissing her back. Hard, unforgiving, unrelenting. His arms band around her, hauling her the last inch against him as a groan rips from the back of his throat.
Karen’s world spins on its axis, black and pink and red as her side stings and pulls and tightens. She launches her attack on Matt with the dedication she does everything else, leaving no corner unturned, no care for safety or preservation or maturity.
She hurts, and she wants him to hurt too.
The thing in her chest purrs, her anger singing in her veins like ice. The scrap of Matt’s stubble sends little shocks of lightning down her spine as Karen’s hands find the edge of his tight shirt, pulling it up with harsh, jerky movements. He helps her rip it over his head, it lands with a soft thud at their feet before their hands are back on each other. The litany of bruises on his chest is a masterpiece of pain that tells her he knows something about how she is feeling.
Matt’s hands are warm and large as they hold her, lips bruising hers with the intensity of his kiss, her kiss. Karen wants more. Wants to burn in it, wants to map her anger out on his skin like he can map out her heartbeats.
She pulls him down towards her, pressing herself against him and Matt leans down further, understanding what she needs without her having to voice it. Rough hands grip the back of her thighs and then she is in his arms, legs banding around his waist as her side pulses with sickening fire and her vision gets blurry.
Matt rips his mouth away from hers like her pain is his, “You’re stitches, you’re bleeding.”
His breath puffs in hot clouds against her mouth and Karen is already tugging him back to her with a rushed, “I don’t care.”
The shiver she lets out has nothing to do with the pained groan that vibrates through his chest.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” It feels too much like care, like softness and Karen’s heart jolts.
“I’m used to it.”
Her hands are in his hair, tugging and fusing their lips back together so he can’t protest. She knows the statement hurts him, feels the tremor in his body and the falter of his kiss.
Matt Murdock, always so fucking noble.
She doesn’t want noble. She doesn’t want gentle. She wants the hurt and the heat and the endless feel of his body against hers. She wants him to take the pain away, take the anger and the grief and exorcise it from her soul because it’s his damn fault it’s there in the first place.
“Karen, I…”
“Stop talking.” She orders because she thinks his voice will break her in two if she hears it while they are like this. Words have gotten them into this mess, she doesn’t want any more of them when she is this desperate to feel something other than hate. She doesn’t want to fall under his spell, she just wants to feel something more than whatever this thing is that is turning corrosive between them.
She wants to feel him alive, breathing and whole.
She wants to bury her anger and her rage inside of him like a bomb because she is so fucking sick of carrying it.
It’s his turn to detonate, Karen doesn’t have anything left to use as shrapnel.
It isn’t soft or kind or loving. It’s not romantic as she always thought it would be. It’s a brutal clash of lips and teeth and tongues. It’s pain exploding across her side that she channels into the way her teeth sink into his bottom lip and her hands fisting in his hair.
Electricity sizzles in her veins and the pain in her side makes her head swim. As if he can sense it, Matt carries her over to the couch, laying her down on it in a way that is too gentle. At least it’s not the bed, Karen doesn’t think she could handle that.
This is sex, this is physical and chemical and a little destructive. The intimacy of it is something she hides behind layers of unsaid words and rage.
Matt keeps kissing her, one after the other after the other. He pulls away long enough for them to breathe, then he is back, consuming her like it’s the only way he can keep himself from talking, the only way he can honour her wishes. Karen drowns in him, rewards him with the way her hands dance along his skin whilst he trembles, arms shaking to keep his weight off her wound. From this angle she has the perfect view of his back, muscles jumping and tensing as he moves. The light of the billboard outside the window changes from blue to red, painting his skin in a glow of colour she wants to memorise.
Hands rip her shirt clean open, buttons scattering to the floor like rain against a window and this, this, is what she wants. Matt’s mouth is on her skin, stubble scrapping her chest raw and she finds the belt at his waist, clawing and tugging until it’s out of her way.
Somewhere in the back of her mind she knows this is reckless. This could destroy them. Knows in her right mind she would hesitate because they don’t have a condom and she isn’t keeping track of her cycles. But the raw need to dismantle this barrier between them while so many others remain make her impulsive and greedy and stupid.
Because she hasn’t had him like this before and this isn’t some Romeo and Juliet story, Karen isn’t under any illusions this will fix anything. A real modern romance then, they would die for each other but living for each other feels like a little too much commitment.
Naked Matt is as pretty as a painting, the glow of the billboard changing from red to pink as he lines himself against her, pausing for a second until Karen growls, shifts to accommodate him instead.
The burn is raw, no time to adjust before she is moving, forcing him to keep up. Matt’s groans fall against her skin, her grip too tight on him to be comfortable but he doesn’t complain. She feels one of his hands against the back of her head, fingers weaving into the strands of her hair like he is trying to tangle them together so they can never separate.
Her vision blurs, black and sickly and she isn’t sure if it’s because of the way he is moving inside her that is pushing her to the edge of oblivion or the stitches pulling against her skin every time he slides in. Karen really doesn’t care. Oblivion is the same no matter what causes it.
She knows Matt is checking on her stitches with his senses, knows every time he shifts the angle to take the pressure off her that he is trying to spare her the pain. Karen’s fingers dig into the muscles of his back and she surges up, her hips chasing his in an act of defiance to his care that leaves her gasping.
No armour, she thinks to herself, no masks, no holding back. She wants him raw and unfiltered and honest. She wants whatever is lurking under his skin that he thinks she will run away from. The devil and the fighter and the man. It’s not love. How can it be when she fucks him like it’s punishment for every lie he gave her, every tear she shed for him. But Matt takes it all like he is repenting every injustice, pleading guilty to his crimes like her body is his confessional. He fucks her like it’s an apology, a band-aid over a bullet hole that won’t fix anything between them but will tie them together in a way that might give them a chance.
It’s quick and harsh, Matt’s breathing growing too rapid in her ear and Karen’s body quivering under his as the leather groans. She is close, the teasing edge of an orgasm playing against the searing pain in her side that is only growing in intensity. His sweat-slick body is moving against hers, turning her anger into a fire that makes her feel so good but so empty because this isn’t right.
This is him and her and it’s all wrong.
This is a haunting.
Wrong time and wrong intention and wrong communication but the end reaches towards her and Karen clings to Matt like she can stop it.
“Please.” Matt says it directly into her ear, a plea of desperation. Karen kisses him just so he doesn’t do it again, the shaky walls of her defense holding as long as Matt Murdock doesn’t beg.
She doesn’t deserve that.
Maybe when this is all over, he will hate her rather than the other way round. Maybe that’s how their story ends.
His body tenses above her, one hand finding where she needs him and sending her over the edge first. Her climax is brutal too, shuddering through her body from her head to her toes, furious and unapologetic. A tear slips out of the corner of her eye, disappearing into her hairline.
And Matt follows right after her, shaking and sweaty and muffling sounds into her skin like he doesn’t want to shatter whatever this is between them.
The billboard flashes back to blue as he slips out of her, making a mess of the couch in his haste to move to the side, wedging himself between her and the back of it to take the pressure off her injury.
Karen gasps from the loss of him rather than the pain, curling her hands into fists to keep from reaching out and touching his skin.
In her mind, she shoves this memory down into the dark. The way he looks spent and devastating and a little scared. He isn’t touching her either, coming down from the high and realising what has happened. What they have just done.
His shirt is still on her, splayed open so every inch is on display and she has no idea what happened to her underwear but her thighs are sticky with him and all she wants to do is run.
The pain in her side is an inferno so Karen focuses on that rather than the black hole of emptiness in her chest that is devouring everything else.
If she stays on this couch any longer, she’ll cry.
Matt seems to be frozen again, so unsure of her reaction she wants to laugh. Daredevil is scared of her?
The sweat cools on her skin, making her shiver and when Karen turns her head she can make out the clock by the window, a lifeline if she ever saw one.
It takes more effort than she is willing to admit to leave the couch, legs still shaky from the orgasm and her side throbbing with pulled stitches she hopes she hasn’t ripped.
One of Matt’s hands reach out to stop her but Karen dodges it, slipping away from him to fumble with the few buttons that survived his attack on her shirt.
“Karen, please wait, can we… can we just talk about…” He sounds desperate, anguished, sad and she can’t stand it.
“I have to go. Foggy is expecting me for dinner, he’ll worry if I’m late.” Her voice doesn’t even sound like hers, detached and laced with pain.
She needs her underwear, she needs pants. She needs to get out of this apartment and away from him before she does anymore damage.
The billboard changes colour again, helping her find her underwear on the floor by the couch. Karen grabs them, shuffling them up her hips with numb fingers. She can feel the essence of him sliding down her thighs, wonders if he can sense it as well.
“You can’t just leave, you’re bleeding.” Matt tells her, standing up as he grabs his trousers from the floor.
“You went to work hiding a lot worse and we both know it.” She points out, making her way to the bedroom to hunt down some trousers. There should be a few pairs of hers left over from the many times she stayed, she isn’t exactly fussy right now.
Matt trails her like a shadow, now covered although the sight of his bare chest has Karen’s cheeks heating which is ridiculous considering what they have just done.
Karen finds a pair of jeans, shoving her legs into them and hastily doing them up before slipping on her trainers. He listens to her do it with sorrow in his eyes.
“Have you seen my coat?” She can’t stay still, flitting around the room to grab her phone and her keys to avoid looking at him, “Where did you put it when you took it off?”
She finds it herself, making her way back to the main room, refusing to look at the couch. Her black coat is hanging over the railing of the stairs and Karen grabs it, eagerly slipping her arms into it and shoving her hands in the pockets.
“Karen, please. We need to talk.”
“No, we don’t.” Comes her firm reply, fingers finding thick leather in her left pocket in the shape of a rectangle.
She makes for the door before he can say her name again, or convince her to stay with that look he is giving her. The one that speaks of his regret and his pain and the need to talk about the sex.
Not right now. She can’t do this right now.
Her hand is on the doorknob when Matt’s voice calls out to her, “You can’t tell Foggy I’m back, Karen. It will put him in danger.”
She doesn’t turn to him. The scoff she offers in response speaks volumes and reminds her how they got here in the first place. She wrenches the door open, the noise of it deafening in the silence of their bubble.
“Screw you, Matt.” She says, her walls building themselves whilst his sweat cools on her skin, “My loyalty is to him right now, not you.”
“Just wait a minute for me to…”
The air of the hallway chills her skin as she slams the door on his sentence, effectively slamming it on him as well.